Space 1999 #3 - The Space Guardians (2 page)

Koenig saw blank black space as the ship again switch-backed violently.

‘Eagle One to Alpha!’ he gasped. ‘Emergency! Losing control—’

Koenig fastened one strap of the restraint harness. He glimpsed the screen. Blank. The thrust of the ship was too much to allow him to move, but he could see no life in the intercom screen. Then the ship dived in a bewildering, bone-jarring rush.

Bergman was trying to reach the still body of Sandra Benes when the ship dived. His motion continued, sickeningly fast until he lurched into a bulkhead. Then he too crumpled into unconsciousness.

‘Power!’ Koenig yelled to the pilot. He couldn’t reach the dual controls. ‘Pull her out, Alan—hold her!’

Ahead, downwards, the grey rocks waited. Koenig heard his own voice and that of Carter. Somewhere behind, the dull sound of bone and flesh thudding on metal.

‘It’s responding!’ Carter croaked. ‘She’s coming round—’

Koenig was driven back by the forces surging from the Eagle’s two engines. He cartwheeled as the ship slid past a mammoth outcrop of black tooth-edged rock. His last memories were of a jolting that shook every plate of the ship; of the jangling sound of metal ripping; of a great well of blackness encompassing the Eagle; and the harness giving and a thrust that propelled him the length of the command module, to slam into the forward con, thinking, ‘It shouldn’t end like this, not on a grey-black surface—’ Then an appalling blow on his head. And that was all: pain and regret, red-blackness, nothing.

The alarm system whined into silence.

‘Eagle One! Eagle One!’ rapped out the Duty Officer. He knew he was wasting his time. The scanners showed nothing. Eagle One was a wreck: no, Eagle One was a total wreck, with barely enough residual power to show its location.

Paul Morrow assumed command as he was contacting Helena Russell.

‘Where? How bad?’ he asked tensely.

The Duty Officer pointed to the screen:

‘We’ve got them in a big crater a hundred miles from Alpha, Paul. Weak emissions of power. Their main propulsion unit is out. It was a bad crash—erratic flight, then a cut off. There’ll be casualties.’

Kano joined Paul Morrow.

Helena’s face appeared on the screen. Morrow saw the piercingly blue eyes full of anguish.

‘How bad?’ he asked. ‘Do you get a reading?’

‘I know three are alive, one weak. But Commander Koenig’s medical monitor doesn’t register, Paul!’

‘John!’
whispered Kano.

They all had the same thought. Koenig had held them together in the first terrible moments of space-wreck. His sometimes icy detachment had persuaded terrified men and women that they could still hope in spite of the cataclysm which had blotted out all thought of normal life. His essential humanity radiated throughout Moonbase Alpha, a visible life-line for the weak and a constant source of reassurance for the strong.

‘Not John,’ said Morrow. ‘Not John Koenig!’ He remembered his duty. ‘Dr Russell, prepare a medical team and get over to Launch Pad Seven. I want you on the way in five minutes.’

She felt like running, but she remained calm. Heart racing, she detailed her team. And then she checked the vital life-readings. Three registered. One gave no reading at all.

As the Rescue Eagle soared away from the Moonbase complex, the word filtered throughout its miles of corridors, penetrating to the furthest recess in the deep underground laboratories, store-rooms and workshops.
Commander Koenig bad.
No one dared to name the unspoken thought.

Paul Morrow realized that he was gripping the supports of the command chair too hard. Kano’s technicians watched his broad face for a hint of news. He forced himself to remain calm. He must not show panic. Minutes dragged by.

‘They must be there!’ growled someone irritably.

As if in response, a misty image filled the screen. It showed the rearing pinnacles of black rock and the deep shadows of a gigantic crater.

‘I see them!’ called the pilot of the Rescue Eagle.

‘How’s the Commander?’ asked Morrow levelly. ‘Helena? Dr Russell? What do you have?’

‘Still no life-reading,’ she said. ‘Nothing, Paul. We’re going down now.’

Morrow and Kano exchanged glances. It took very little time. The seconds thudded away like strokes from an axe. Then:

‘He’s alive,’ with wonder and relief from Helena Russell. ‘He’s badly hurt, but he’s alive.’

‘Thank God,’ whispered Morrow. He would have said more, but Helena Russell’s voice cut in again:

‘We’ve two casualties, Professor Bergman and Sandra Benes. They’re not too bad. But I’m worried about the Commander—will you get David Kano to check with computer?’

‘Check what, Dr Russell?’ said Kano.

‘Check his life-readings. And quickly!’

‘Immediately!’

‘Why, Dr Russell?’ asked Morrow. He kept the new apprehension from his voice.

‘Because there’s nothing showing on his personal monitor—it’s at zero, Paul!’

‘But he’s alive, Doctor! You said so!’

‘Run the check, please, Paul. John Koenig is breathing. Just. But there is no indication of life apart from that, not according to his body-sensors.’

Paul Morrow knew what she meant. Sensors embedded at the vital areas measured all uses of energy. Now, none of them registered. It must be a technical fault. For life to go on, there had to be the use of energy.

Kano returned.

‘Well, David?’

‘Computer says the sensors are a hundred per cent.’

Morrow paled. Commander Koenig was breathing. But the computer said he was dead.

It had been a long walk, but Koenig felt curiously refreshed. If he hadn’t known how absurd the idea to be, he could have been striding along a tree-lined road with the wind cutting across grassland and the sun warm on his face. The space-suit hardly worried him, the heavy headpiece rubbed only gently on his shoulders.

He pushed a button and stepped through the airlock. They’d be surprised to see him. Curious that the Rescue Mission had been so long. But they probably had other things to attend to. It hadn’t been such a bad crash after all. Bergman and Service Technician Benes injured but not critically. Carter in good spirits even though he had not been able to raise Alpha. Someone had to make the long walk, so Koenig had ordered them to remain with the Eagle.

Koenig pushed off his helmet. The travel tube accelerated and within a minute he was in the corridor which led to Main Mission Control. A sense of urgency filled him now, but also a feeling of well-being. He had survived. There were injuries, but it was not a disaster.

‘Paul?’ he called, as the door slid away.

A low humming filled the room. Air-circulating fans: a subdued electronic whisper from screens: the sense of power units pumping life into Moonbase. All as it should be. Except that one never noticed the low insistent noise. There was always the sound of the human voice to hide it.

‘David!’ Koenig heard his own voice ring out into the near-silence.

Main Mission Control was deserted. There was no sign of movement whatsoever. Puzzled, Koenig walked to his office. The door slid back at his touch.

‘Paul!’

It was so strange as to be puzzling. Always, there was movement, life, the sounds of human activity. Decisions, questions, small jokes, the common courtesies of their lives. Suddenly, Koenig whirled.

There had been movement. He glimpsed the woman.

‘What the devil—’ he began, too stunned to finish the expostulations, for the woman was a complete stranger to him and she was already fading in a strange purple haze as he stared open-mouthed at her.

The woman had been there: she was gone.

She was quite tall, slim, dressed in a long gown which shimmered with red and gold lights. It covered her body yet revealed its beauties. The form beneath had a graceful elegance, rounded and slender: honey-bronze and exquisite. And she had vanished in the moment he had looked at her.

He passed a hand over his forehead. He looked down at the hand. No blood. There had been a cut . . .

He looked at his wrist.

He shivered. Without making a conscious decision, he turned back to his office and ordered a reading on the crew of Eagle One. ‘Life-reading,’ he said. ‘Carter, pilot. Professor Bergman. Technician Benes. He paused. ‘And Commander, Moonbase.’

Silently he examined the readings. One normal. Two showed damage, not serious. One: nothing. ‘Recheck on Commander Koenig!’ he snapped, unable to keep the raw edge of tension from his voice.

‘Correct readings, sir,’ said a smooth electronic voice. There was no surprise in it, nothing but cold efficiency.

Koenig looked down at the wrist which had attracted his attention when he tried to wipe off the blood which should have issued from the wound. The life-register indicators showed nothing: a nil reading.

The computer confirmed the information.

Koenig trembled. He felt panic begin to scream through his mind, and then he realized that he, of all people, could not abandon himself to despair. He forced himself to walk carefully through to Main Mission Control. There was a mystery here but it could be explained. Always, there had to be an explanation.

But the silence? The deserted Control? The nil reading?

He crossed to the big scanner.

‘General view,’ he said.

The scanners in orbit over the Moon would show him Moonbase, pinpoint any aberrations and pick out the cause of the mystery. For there had to be cause. Something threatened Moonbase. They would read the signs and pick out the intertwining agency.

The scanner blazed instantly, flooding with a deep violet-purple. And then images formed. Koenig reeled. The impact was tremendous. A city filled the screen. It could be nothing else. Human, undoubtedly made for people. But how could people make such things? Dazzling shapes, iridescent under a calm and brilliant purple sky, but shapes which changed as you looked at them—colours spangling and coruscating like living things, and then turning back into regular shapes as tiny craft darted in amongst them, to hang and then become absorbed.

Koenig knew that, without question, he was looking into the future of his race. Even as he began to ask the dazed questions which sprang into his mind, the city (
city?
thought Koenig, but like
that?
) became part of a shifting, more subtle, panorama. Koenig reached for the console and strained against vertigo.

Blue and purple particles spun before him. There was a sense of darkness, of impossible distances and unimaginable speed. And then, slowly, a figure took shape. A man, thought Koenig.
One from our future.

He was tall, as tall as Koenig, wide-shouldered and confident. Younger than me, thought Koenig, and this was strange too, for the man’s eyes were heavy with knowledge, experience, and power.

‘Welcome to Zenno, Commander,’ he said.

‘Gently, Commander,’ he warned. ‘Think. It is real, not a dream. This is a planet. I exist, just as you do.’

Koenig began to recover from his bewildered stupefaction as he put his right hand to his head. There had been a blow. The crash. That was it. Crashed, a concussion, and now hallucination.

The man shook his head.

‘No, Commander. This is a planet. Its existence won’t be suspected by your race for a hundred of your life-times. Perhaps never.’ The smile, thought Koenig, betrayed the man,
arrogant.

‘I had a computer check on all the star-systems in this sector. Not one has a habitable planet.’

‘Commander, we can camouflage our existence from your archaic probes.’

Archaic,
thought Koenig. He thinks we’re backward.

‘As you are, Commander,’ said the man. ‘And I should not toy with you.’ His voice changed, the smile disappeared, and his eyes blazed with something like exultation. ‘John Koenig, I am Raan, a citizen of Zenno. Look at Zenno City.’

He waved, and a dazzling panoramic view of the fantastic city Koenig had seen in the big screen of Main Mission Control unfolded and engulfed him. Its rearing towers climbed majestically into a violent purple sky. He was forced backwards. He felt dwarfed, a savage from the jungles of Earth suddenly adrift in a modern city complex.

‘You will adjust, John Koenig,’ said Raan. ‘But first you must know that I read your thoughts. And I understand your feelings of inadequacy. They are well based. It will be thousands of years before your race begins to be able to reach out to us and meet us on something like level terms.’

Koenig looked past the man. Purple was the predominant hue of Zenno. Purple sky, a violent purple sun that hung darkly over the shimmering city. Then Koenig looked back at the man who called himself Raan.
Telepathic.

Raan nodded.

‘Try to adjust, Commander. It’s true. I read your mind. And I brought you here.’

‘And what of my ship?’ Koenig said bitterly. ‘And my command?’

‘Look.’

Raan’s strange eyes shimmered, and the purple sky-city dissolved into a glaring purple void. Koenig again had the sensation of immense distance. And then he saw himself.

He was looking down at the slow-breathing body of John Koenig as if he were one of the half-dozen people in the cabin of the wrecked Eagle. Carter was there, crowded by a pair of medical attendants. Bergman watched the unconscious body—watched
him!
—with a puzzled air of uncomprehending pity. And on Helena Russell’s beautiful face was the intent stare of a professional confronted by the inexplicable.

Koenig tensed as he saw the wound on his own forehead. It had been cleaned up, but the gash told of the gravity of the injury.

Helena Russell spoke crisply:

‘I can’t do anything for him here. He can be moved, Paul.’

Koenig glimpsed Paul Morrow’s worried features in the small screen. ‘I’ll send a Cargo Eagle, Dr Russell. Any reaction, anything at all?’

Koenig watched, fascinated, as Helena ran a finger over his white face. No one else saw the action. She didn’t look like a surgeon.

‘None,’ she said to the screen.

Koenig refused to believe what he saw.

‘Hallucination,’ said Koenig across the light-years. ‘I don’t know how I project you, but I’m still on a rock, out of control and lost. You’re an unreality.’